Kentucky Mesonet One of 70 Programs on the Chopping Block in Governor's Budget

Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin presented his State of the Commonwealth on Tuesday. He suggested 70 programs that could be eliminated from the state budget.

One of those is the Kentucky Mesonet based at Western Kentucky University. Rhonda Miller spoke with state climatologist and director of the Kentucky Mesonet Stuart Foster about the implications of the governor’s recommended budget cuts on farmers, businesses and individuals across the state.

Listen

Listening...

/

3:59

“Well, it’s certainly not news we wanted to hear and at this point we can’t speculate as to what would happen long-term,” said Foster. “The state funding that we received in the last biennial budget was really critical for us, in terms of helping to unlock the value of the Mesonet and really start to make the investments to grow our services that we provide in communities all across the state of Kentucky.”

What’s that service, basically, for people who aren’t familiar with it?

“The Kentucky Mesonet is statewide infrastructure for weather and climate monitoring. We provide current high-quality observations of weather conditions, right now at 69 locations throughout the state. Those observations go directly to the National Weather Service offices that serve Kentucky. That helps to promote enhanced public safety, helps the weather service to make better forecasts, better decisions about when to issue severe weather warnings, whether it’s winter weather conditions or severe thunderstorms or flash flooding,” said Foster. “It provides them critical information so that they can help to protect people across the state.”

“Another important component of the Mesonet is to help enhance economic development,” said Foster. ”Much of our economy in Kentucky is weather sensitive and probably no sector more so than agriculture. So that’s one of our areas of focus, in terms of providing weather information to support decision-making by farmers.”

Is the Mesonet budget dependent on this state portion of the budget?

“It would certainly be really critical to us. If we look at last year’s budget, about 75 percent, about three-quarters of it, is money from the state,” said Foster.

The annual Kentucky Mesonet budget is about one million dollars, with $750,000 from the state.

“That money has helped to leverage dollars coming at the local level and critically, dollars coming from federal programs,” said Foster. “That’s money coming into Kentucky to support things that benefit people across the state. Our state funding has helped to make that possible. We certainly expect that will continue to grow in the future as long as we have the state support, because the Kentucky Mesonet is one of a very small number of elite weather monitoring networks that exist anywhere across the United States.”

How often do these sites collect weather information?

“Mesonet stations are automated stations that collect weather observations every five minutes throughout the day. So during periods of active weather, like we’ve had recently with winter weather, or when we’re having thunderstorms, that means you have temperature, precipitation and wind measurements coming every five minutes,” said Foster. “When things are happening quickly, that’s important.”

Anything else you’d like to add about the importance of the Kentucky Mesonet?

“Just to say that in the last two years since we’ve received state funding we’ve been able to make some significant upgrades and investments across the state. We have a number of initiatives, some of them focused on agriculture, others in public health, water management and a variety of areas that positively impact people all across the state,” said Foster. “We certainly hope that the state perspective will change and we’ll be able to continue to do the good work and make the progress that we’ve seen over the last two years.”

Patrick Collins is the Mesonet systems meteorologist. He says the real-time data collected at the Monroe County site is important because the area, which is just a couple of miles from the Tennessee border, is prone to tornadoes.

The Kentucky Mesonet dramatically increased data collection at its 68 weather and climate monitoring stations during the solar eclipse.

Melissa Griffin is responsible for data quality for Kentucky Mesonet, which is based at Western Kentucky University. She says the data that came in during the eclipse provides almost a real-time collection of atmospheric conditions.

The Kentucky state climatologist said scientists must continue to provide updated climate information to U.S. decision makers.

The comments come after President Donald Trump’s decision to remove the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement.

State Climatologist Stuart Foster oversees the Kentucky Mesonet with weather and climate monitoring stations across the state. Foster is director of the Kentucky Climate Center and said Mesonet provides extensive data that’s available to state policy makers.

The National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory for most of our area through the weekend.

High temperatures will be in the mid-to-upper 90s. Those temperatures are not the only thing to be concerned about, says Patrick Collins, a meteorologist for the statewide weather monitoring system called Kentucky Mesonet.

“Be careful of the temperature, as well as the heat index, which is the temperature added to the amount of humidity in the air."

Over the next few days, that combination will produce a heat index that feels more like 105-to-110 degrees. A heat index of 105 or higher is especially dangerous for children, the elderly and people who work outside.

It’s been an intense summer in Kentucky weather-wise. Before the heat wave, Kentucky had heavy rains that broke records in at least one location in the state.

Megan Schargorodski is operations manager for Kentucky Mesonet, which has 66 weather stations.

“Earlier in July we had an event in western Kentucky, in Marshall County, that experienced about 8 inches of rain in 5 hours. According to climatological charts, that's about a 1,000- year event.”

That means the area is only expected to get that much rain in that amount of time only about every 1,000 years.